Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 63, No. 6, Ed. 1 Thursday, February 5, 2009 Page: 3 of 36
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TEXAS JEWISH POST #SINCE 1947
CANDIDATE PROFILE
February 5,2009 I 3
ISRAEL VOTES 2009
Livni struggling to assert leadership credentials
By Leslie Susser
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Four and a
half months ago, Tzipi Livni was on
top of the world.
Ehud Olmert had resigned as
prime minister, Livni had won the
Kadima primary election to replace
him and coalition negotiations with
the party's existing coalition partners
were expected to be a mere formality
But the newly installed Kadima
leader hadn't reckoned on the close
ties between opposition leader Benja-
min Netanyahu of Likud and the Sep-
hardic Orthodox Shas party When
the chips were down, Shas refused to
join her coalition and Livni was forced
to go for an early general election.
Since then, she has suffered one
setback after another.
First, after her failure to form a co-
alition, Olmert refused to step down
as acting prime minister of the care-
taker government and hand over the
reins to Livni. Had he made way for
her, Livni would have been able to run
in the Feb. 10 election from a position
of incumbency, giving her a chance to
establish herself in the public eye as a
bona fide leader.
Her biggest weakness as a candi-
date is her relative lack of experience
at the top, especially given that her
two main rivals for prime minister
— Netanyahu and Labor leader Ehud
Barak — are former prime ministers
themselves.
Next, Livni was hurt by the deep-
ening global economic crisis. Netan-
yahu, who had a successful stint as
finance minister from 2003 to 2005,
is seen as someone with strong eco-
nomic credentials. The crisis helped
his campaign and hurt Livni's.
Photo: Brian Hendler
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the Kadima Party leader, at the Foreign Ministry in
Jerusalem on Jan. 29.
The 22-day war with Hamas in
Gaza helped another of Livni's main
rivals, Barak, who as defense minister
was seen as the war's architect. He won
plaudits both for rebuilding the Israel
Defense Forces after its poor perfor-
mance against Hezbollah in Lebanon
in the summer of 2006, and for the
successful prosecution of the Gaza
campaign.
Although Livni was a member
of the top wartime decision-making
troika — Olmert, Livni and Barak —
she was not seen as a wartime leader.
Had she been prime minister, things
might have looked very different.
Livni started her campaign as Mrs.
Clean, when government corruption
was high on the national agenda, after
the Olmert scandal and other scan-
dals affecting leading politicians. She
promised a different kind of politics,
without corruption or coalition wheel-
ing and dealing, and with a new, more
functional system of government.
But the changing national agenda
has made all this virtually irrelevant in
the upcoming election.
Livni was hurt, too, by Kadima's
uninspiring list of candidates for the
Knesset. There were no exciting new
faces in the top 10, and two of Kadima's
more zealous and heavyweight Knes-
set members—Professor Yitzhak Ben
Yisrael, who had helped Livni position
herself to take over from Olmert, and
Professor Menachem Ben Sasson, who
was working on a constitution for Is-
rael —were forced so far down the list
that both quit politics altogether.
Livni's troubles made it easy for the
Likud to target her as lacking the ex-
perience and gravitas necessary to be
prime minister.
"Tzipi Livni? It's too big for her,"
the Likud's negative campaign slogan
says.
Not surprisingly given the circum-
stances, Livni's campaign is based on
three main elements: establishing her
credentials as a national leader; attack-
ing Netanyahu as a prime minister
who has failed once and will fail again
for the same reasons; and presenting
her policies as the best prescription for
Israel's long-term survival.
On the campaign trail, Livni, who
normally insists on keeping her pub-
lic persona and private life separate,
has opened up a bit, talking about the
home in which she grew up. Both her
parents were members of the under-
ground Irgun, which fought British
forces in Palestine in the pre-state era.
From them, Livni says, she learned
integrity and to fight for the values in
which she believes.
Focusing on her right-wing revi-
sionist background is intended to ap-
peal to right-wing voters and to create
the image of a tough, committed lead-
er ready to make peace but unwilling
to compromise one iota in the fight
against terrorism.
With Netanyahu well ahead in the
polls, Kadima is running a strongly
negative campaign to discredit him.
The main thrust is to depict his first
term as prime minister as an unmiti-
gated failure, especially because of his
reluctance to move the peace process
forward and the resultant clash with
the Clinton administration.
Dennis Ross, Clinton's special
Middle East envoy, has described Ne-
tanyahu as "overcome with hubris"
and "nearly insufferable."
The strongest anti-Netanyahu card
Kadima has played so far has been to
conjure up the specter of an even
"Livni's troubles
made it easy for
the Likud to target
her as lacking the
experience and
gravitas necessary
to be prime
minister."
worse clash between a Netanyahu-led
government and the Obama adminis-
tration on precisely the same issues of
personality and policy.
Livni's own policy pitch is to depict
the two-state solution to the Israel-
Palestinian conflict as a core Israeli
interest and not a favor to the Pales-
tinians. She argues that two states
would secure Israel's future as a Jew-
ish and democratic state, enhance its
international standing and solve the
refugee problem because Palestinian
refugees would return to the Palestin-
ian nation-state, not to Israel.
Moreover, once there are two states
and Israel is no longer an occupying
power, it will have international legiti-
macy to retaliate with overwhelming
force — the way it did in Gaza — if it
is attacked from Palestine.
Livni believes in creating wide in-
ternational coalitions for peace and
for confronting Israel's enemies, in-
cluding Iran.
She was the driving force behind
U.N. Security Council Resolution
1701, which brought the 2006 Lebanon
see LIVNI, pl4
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Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 63, No. 6, Ed. 1 Thursday, February 5, 2009, newspaper, February 5, 2009; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth188227/m1/3/: accessed July 6, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .